Forum:Is Dead Romance canon?
I'm a little confused about Dead Romance. I know there are multiple versions, but I don't get why even the edition published by sole authority of Lawrence Miles fails to bear the Faction Paradox logo. Is the main part of it not actually an FP story? I would imagine the only edition that might possibly be canon to this wiki is the 2004 edition. So are there parts of it that are FP and parts that aren't? For the moment, I've left it off the list at Faction Paradox Wiki:Canon policy, but it can be added if there's adequate proof of its relevance to the FPU. 01:29: Tue 12 Jun 2012 :I don't see why it shouldn't be considered canonical to FP. As I recall, the later edition shaves out a few references which come close to saying "Time Lords" and replaces them with "Great Houses", and so forth (though I must confess I haven't taken the time to go through both editions to see what the changes were). Certainly, some elements from Dead Romance make their way into Faction Paradox lore (such as force-regenerated House agents ... and are the Sphinxes from Dead Romance the Unkindnesses?). :I think that the second edition may have been published without the FP logo (but with the FP trade dress, mind you) because even though it's in the same world as the Faction Paradox stories (the invading force is the Time Lords/Great Houses fleeing the War), it doesn't actually feature the Faction. Plus, it's a different (bottle) universe. :For what little it's worth (infinitesimally little, as it happens), TVTropes' Faction Paradox page includes Dead Romance references. —Josiah Rowe 04:07, June 12, 2012 (UTC) I'd say it should be canonical. Afterall, Miles wouldn't have gone through all the trouble of rewording it if he didn't consider it so. --Revan\Talk 21:45, June 29, 2012 (UTC) :Yes, but he also approved the cover, on which the FP logo is conspicuously absent. I'm confused by Josiah's statement that it's in the same world, but a different universe. In DC comics terms, does that mean that it's set on Earth-2, but tells a story of ordinary citizens we've never met on Earth-1? 16:25: Mon 09 Jul 2012 Tales of the City doesn't use the Faction Paradox logo yet Obverse has delcared it as part of the range just as Miles did with Dead Romance. I really don't see the problem here. --Revan\Talk 18:26, July 9, 2012 (UTC) ::Sorry, the "different universe" business was a bit unclear. I was using "world" and "universe" in slightly different senses. In narrative terms, Dead Romance connects with Lawrence Miles' other writings insofar as it features members of the Great Houses (or, by implication, Time Lords in the original edition) fleeing from a War they're losing. It also features Cwej (as seen in both the NAs and The Book of the War). Plus, there are apparently some suggestions that Cousin Eliza from the audios is Christine Summerfield from Dead Romance (though I haven't seen the argument myself). Anyway, that's what I meant by saying that it's in the same world as the Faction, though Faction Paradox themselves don't appear. (Revan is right, it's just the same as the situation with Tales of the City.) ::When I said it's in a different "universe", I wasn't using the term in the narrative sense, or as we do when we talk about the "Faction Paradox universe" or the "Doctor Who universe". I was talking about a specific plot element which features in Dead Romance and Interference. In Interference, I.M. Foreman has a "bottle universe", in which there's a version of the Seventh Doctor. Miles said in interviews that he meant that to be the universe of the New Adventures, because it seemed to him that the EDAs and the NAs weren't taking place in the same universe. Dead Romance takes place in that bottle universe. In Interference, I.M. Foreman says that members of the High Council have expressed an interest in the bottle universe to use as a possible bolt-hole from the War; that's exactly what happens in Dead Romance, as seen from the perspective of one of that universe's inhabitants. It's implied at the end of Dead Romance that Christine flees to the universe the invaders came from (which would presumably set her up for becoming Cousin Eliza). And I.M. Foreman also says that she thinks that the bottle is leaking, which is what would account for NA elements appearing in the EDA universe. (It should be noted that other EDA authors didn't follow through with Miles' interpretation about the EDAs and NAs being different universes; in Doctor Who terms, none of this was confirmed in a story, so we're OK treating them as a single universe over at the Evil Renegade wiki.) ::In old-school DC Universe terms (I've no idea what's up with the DCU these days, as I more or less checked out with Flashpoint), you could sort of say that the NA universe (including the original version of Dead Romance) was pre-Crisis Earth-2, the EDA universe was pre-Crisis Earth-1, and the Faction Paradox universe was the post-Crisis Earth, incorporating elements of both Earth-1 and Earth-2 into its history. And the second edition of Dead Romance would be equivalent to those Young All-Star comics Roy Thomas wrote in the late '80s, explaining how the Justice Society's adventures took place in a world without the Golden Age Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman. Except that it's nothing like that. As Miles wrote in Interference — Book Two, "Ah. The unmistakable sound of a metaphor snapping." ::But I think that analogy may explain why I had earlier argued for a partial inclusion of the FP stories from the EDAs here — I do think that from the perspective of the Faction Paradox universe, those stories did take place, only slightly altered (Time Lords becoming Great Houses and so forth), just as many pre-Crisis DC stories still "happened" in the post-Crisis universe, only with slightly altered participants. Back-references in The Book of the War to the events of Alien Bodies, Interference, The Taking of Planet Five and The Shadows of Avalon strongly suggest this. But that's another discussion. —Josiah Rowe talk to me 03:43, July 11, 2012 (UTC) :::I just read the introduction to the book and Miles does state that he specifically editied the reprint so that it could be integrated into his Faction Paradox range of novels. --Revan\Talk 16:54, August 6, 2012 (UTC)